


Measure for Measure

by AstridContraMundum



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe-The Great British Bake-Off, Awkward Flirting, Crack, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27739345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: When Alan Jago sabotages George Fancy's work station, will Fancy be the next to leave the GBBO show tent?Or, with the help of some new friends, will he live to see another day?
Relationships: George Fancy/Shirley Trewlove, Joss Bixby/Endeavour Morse
Comments: 13
Kudos: 21





	Measure for Measure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [human_dreamer_etcetera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/human_dreamer_etcetera/gifts), [kittblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittblue/gifts).



> Thank you to visionsofmangoes and kittblue for giving me the best headcanons for this!
> 
> It was more challenging to try than I thought: GBBO is much better suited to a visual than to a written format, really. A lot happens, but there’s not a ton of plot! XD But here it goes... <3

George Fancy held the bowl steady in the crook of his arm as he beat six egg whites, his hand shaking all the while—not so much with the effort, but out of pure nervous energy.

It was only half an hour into the technical challenge, and already he felt woefully behind.

Even though time was precious, he couldn’t help it—couldn’t help but to take a quick look around at the other competitors, to see if they, too, were cracking like egg shells under the pressure.

But his quick appraisal gave him little comfort.

At a sky-blue work station to his front left, Win Thursday was looking coolly confident as she measured out forty grams of sugar. No surprises there. She was a mum. An _actual_ mum. She, no doubt, could whip up a cake like this in her sleep.

Or, at least, while sorely sleep-deprived.

And, just before him, Jim Strange was puttering about his little bench, just as smooth as an ox managing to ice-skate around the rim of a china tea cup, as if the clock didn’t even _exist,_ whistling happily to himself, as if this was all just the best fun.

And _was_ it fun?

It had seemed so, at first.

It had all started as a bit of a joke, this baking lark. His flatmates had grown tired of the endless round of curry and fish and chips, and so he had thought: what else breaks the monotony of takeaway better than a real, homemade dessert to whip you out of the blues?

And, to everyone’s surprise, his cake had turned out alright. Maybe even better than alright.

But here, now, amidst this set, he felt utterly out of his league.

Fancy startled, redoubling his efforts with the egg whites, as, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the Great British Bake-Off’s two judges, Shirley Trewlove and Joss Bixby, were beginning to make their rounds. 

They stopped first at Ronnie Box’s station, right up at the front of the show tent. But whatever it was that Ronnie was attempting, Shirley Trewlove seemed fairly unimpressed.

“Looks like you’ve used enough butter to paint a double yellow all down the Broad,” she remarked, drily.

By her side, Joss Bixby, ever Shirley’s encouraging foil, smiled.

“You can never have too much of a good thing,” he countered.

Ronnie said nothing, merely glowered at Shirley’s rebuke, but he seemed to welcome the attention, all the same. He was always strutting about his station with an added bit of swagger for the cameras. He kept his sleeves rolled up to the elbows at all times—less, it seemed, to prevent the black fabric of his tight shirt from getting covered in flour than to show off his forearms to their best advantage.

Fancy smirked.

It must annoy Ronnie no end, the way that much of the cast and crew seemed to get all swoony when Max DeBryn, the contestant working at the bench beside him—an unassuming and bespectacled man who was maybe about half Ronnie’s height—had rolled up his sleeves in a similar fashion.

Something about the precise manner in which he had set a seed cake on a glass pedestal had set them all sighing with longing.

And then Fancy, too, sighed.

If only Shirley Trewlove would look at him like that, his heart would swell up, just as if it had been left overnight in a proofing drawer.

But nothing he had done so far seemed to capture her attention, let alone elicit one word of praise.

For one of his first challenges, he had pulled out all the stops, hoping to bowl her over.

He had made a towering fairytale castle of gingerbread, the perfect place for a happily-ever-after. And, right in front, he had placed two marzipan figures holding almond-paste hands before the elaborately piped-icing door.

Shirley had looked at it and said nothing, leaving a flood of warmth to rush up into his face.

Had he made the candied figures look a little _too_ much like himself and Shirley?

Worn his heart—along with streaks of drizzled almond-flavoured icing—a little _too_ much on his sleeve?

“Hard to impress, huh?” he had asked.

She had looked at him blankly, her face as smooth as fondant.

“You’ve no idea.”

Well.

  
At least there was always Morse between him and certain defeat.

Fancy turned around and looked beside him, where Morse was sitting on his stool, glumly watching the buzz of activity around him, taking in the bright pastel cheerfulness of the tent—all of the hushed lavender and soft, sour-apple green and dreamy sky blue, besotted with a flurry of colourful teapots and jolly little Union Jack banners and glass vases filled with delphiniums—considering it all with his big mournful eyes, as if it offended him on a deeply personal level.

And then he pulled out a bottle of rum and took a long, doleful swig.

Wait.

Was rum in the recipe? 

Fancy turned and rifled through the papers before him, frantically, checking the list of ingredients.

No.

It was just Morse having a break, then.

Although a break from what, really? The man hadn’t even _started_ anything yet.

Fancy shook his head to clear it, trying to concentrate on the task at hand.

It all had seemed so much easier in his own, poky, cluttered little kitchen, back at his flat. Without the pressure of the cameras, the other contestants ….

… the cool blue eyes of Shirley Trewlove, looking his way.

But, for now, she had stopped at Strange’s bench to scrutinize his work, a wisp of blonde hair falling from her updo, begging to be brushed back from her perfect, unfathomable face.

Fancy poured out a measure of sugar into his mix, while all the while gazing Shirley. He could just imagine his sure fingers leaving the slightest glimmer of icing sugar as he traced the curve of her cheek …

“Dear, dear, that’s not right. That’s not right at all.” 

“Huh?” Fancy asked, with a jump.

He turned to see that Win Thursday was there, right there, standing right at his elbow.

Fancy felt his cheeks go hot.

Could Mrs. Thursday have read the thoughts on his face? Was he _so_ very transparent?

But, much to Fancy’s relief, Mrs. Thursday was looking not at him, but rather at the sugar cannister at the edge of his work bench. She dipped a finger into the glass container and raised it deftly to her lips.

“Why, that’s not sugar,” she said. “That’s salt.”

Fancy frowned and gave the mixture in his bowl a tentative taste.

It tasted like egg _soup._

He groaned aloud and checked the cannister, thinking he must have made a mistake as he had fallen into daydreaming—but, no; the container was clearly marked, in flowing robin’s egg blue script, with the word “ _sugar.”_

This was no accident.

This was sabotage.

Fancy whipped his head all around, wondering who might have it in for him, only to see Alan Jago’s narrowed eyes quickly dart away, back to his mixing bowls.

And was Fancy imaging it? Or was there a hint of a smirk on his crafty face?

The bastard.

And to think Fancy had shared a half of a Kit-Kat with him, during one of the breaks.

He spun back around to Mrs. Thursday.

“Did you see him look?” he hissed. “It was Alan! He shot me in the back!”

“Stabbed you in the back,” Morse corrected, slouched on his stool beside them.

“ _What?”_ Fancy asked.

“The phrase is ‘ _stabbed_ you in the back.’”

Morse, his arms folded, leaned back on his stool so that he could see around him and Win Thursday, getting a good look at Alan, considering him for a moment with his overlarge blue eyes. Then, he inclined his head towards Fancy, closing the space between them.

“You want to watch that one,” he murmured. “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”

“Who’s Cassius?” Fancy asked. 

“Never mind that, dear,” Win Thursday said. “I can help you to get caught up.”

She tipped the spoilt, salty batter into the bin, and, then, to Fancy’s horror, she got down to work right away, leaving him simply to stand there, like a lost chick clucked over by a mother hen, right as....

And, oh god, this was hell. The judges were coming over. What would Shirley think? He would seem just a puppy dog of a boy, needing the help of a woman who might be his mother. She would think him utterly incompetent, she would think him an idiot, she would.... 

“What’s this, then?” Shirley asked, surveying the tableau of the three of them with cool and critical eyes.

And there it was—the moment he had at once been waiting for and dreading.

Fancy didn’t know what to say. It was one thing to be the victim of such a dirty trick, another to be a grass about it.

Win Thursday, too, seemed to hesitate to accuse Alan; she was a kind soul, really—reluctant to jump to conclusions, not having seen his enemy’s shifty-eyed little smirk for herself.

But, Morse, it seemed, slumped behind his lavender work station topped with a seafoam green vintage mixer, had no such compunctions.

“Treachery,” he said, simply.

Shirley looked to Morse sharply, and Morse cast a pointed glance towards Alan Jago, who was now whipping up his eggs, looking the picture of all innocence.

A little _too_ innocent, really, to be believed. You might almost believe an imaginary halo floated somewhere in the space over his head, he was laying it on _that_ thick, as thick as buttercream.

Shirl followed Morse’s gaze, and she seemed to cotton on at once, her face betraying the slightest frost of cold anger.

Fancy didn’t much envy Alan Jago at the moment.

It gave him a little thrill, to be honest. 

Bixby in the meanwhile, ever the gracious one, ever the foil, smiled, looking supremely bemused.

“You must be mistaken, surely,” he said. “This is a straight house, old man.”

Ronnie Box sniggered, and Bixby turned towards the front of the tent to glare at him as if he were a bit of batter stuck on the bottom of his expensive Italian shoes.

Morse, in the meanwhile, simply shrugged, as if it wasn’t of much importance to him if they believed him one way or another.

But Shirley cast Alan Jago a final burning look before turning her attention back to Morse.

“So,” she asked, briskly. “What have you got to show us?”

“Oh,” Morse said. “Well. If I knew you were coming, I would have baked a cake.”

Shirley hesitated.

“That’s rather the point, isn’t it? You’re _supposed_ to be baking a cake.”

“Now, Shirl, my dear. The man might be simply waiting for a bit of inspiration,” Bixby said.

Morse considered the pair of them for a moment, and then, slowly, he slid off his stool and began to work.

Fancy’s heart sunk.

Morse was unpredictable. So far, it seemed a miracle he had managed to hang on at all, keeping in the competition only as if he were dangling from his fingertips from the edge of the rooftop of the cathedral at Alfredus College.

But sometimes, after Morse sat stewing for a while, he would hop up and throw ten or eleven different ingredients together—things you would never think to mix—and pull off a real show-stopper at the very last hour.

And so it seemed might be the case now, as Morse measured out a bit of butter and slogged it into a bowl.

“Looks scrumptious,” Bixby said.

Morse regarded him, blankly.

“I haven’t started anything yet.”

“Yes. Well. Still. Looks awfully good so far, from where I’m standing.”

Bixby waved his hands theatrically, then, palming one over the other, and, somehow, he managed to produce a little bottle of vanilla, as if out of thin air.

“Perhaps you might care for a little of this?”

Morse scowled.

“It’s fake. It’s imitation. The real stuff comes from an orchid. I’ve seen it.” 

Morse looked as cross as two sticks, but it hardly mattered; Bixby’s smile did not fade in the slightest. He waved his hands again with another dramatic flourish, while, beside him, Shirley Trewlove rolled her eyes.

This time, Bixby reached out to cup the side of Morse’s sullen face, seeming to pull a clear glass bottle out from his ear.

“A little anise, then?”

And then something happened that Fancy would not have thought possible.

Morse _actually_ smiled.

Well.

Sort of. 

His mouth quirked a bit, anyway. 

Looked sort of painful, really.

Fancy found himself glued to the odd little exchange. He wasn’t sure _what_ it was he was watching, exactly, but he followed the conversation anyway, as if keen to pick up tips.

“It’s a little too rich for me,” Morse said. “I might be more at home with something like t _hat._ ”

He nodded to the front of the room, then, to where a red bottle of rose water sat as part of the display at the front table, beside a floridly chartreuse teapot and a vase of fresh lavender.

“It’s yours,” Bixby said.

Bixby went off at once to retrieve it, skimming along as if he were walking on air, as if he were as light as chiffon, and Shirley, shaking her head in disapproval, followed, as if to have words with her colleague.

“Must be nice, having friends in high places,” Ronnie said.

But Morse ignored him, turning his attention at last to the recipe. He picked up a pen and held it aloft, clicking away at it by his ear. Then, he made a mark on the paper, a look of smug satisfaction on his face.

It was enough to send Fancy into another round of panic.

“Are we supposed to _correct_ the recipe, too?” Fancy asked.

“There was a missing apostrophe,” Morse said. “Couldn’t bear to look at it, really.”

“There you are, George, dear,” Win Thursday said.

“What?” Fancy blurted.

“I think I’ve got you all caught up back to where you were.”

Fancy felt his heart sink; he had been so distracted by all the little dramas unfolding about him, that he realized only too late that he hadn’t been paying the slightest bit of attention as to what she had been doing. 

“But… I don’t know what to do from here,” he protested.

“Whatever it is, you’ll put it right,” she said.

“Will I?” he asked.

“It’s what you do.”

She smiled encouragingly, and he watched her as she returned to her own station, wishing he could believe her.

But the truth of the matter was, he wasn’t an irresistible confection.

He was toast.

***

Once the break was over and the judges had had time to confer, all of the competitors began to assemble at the front of the tent, to where a line of white chairs lay in wait for them, as if prepared for a firing squad. 

Fancy looked about for Morse. If this was to be his last day, it would be nice to go out seated beside ... well ... if not a friendly, then at least an allied face.

But Morse was nowhere to be seen. 

“Where’s Morse?” Fancy asked.

Jim Strange grimaced, as if it were a question he’d rather not answer, leaving Fancy perplexed, but, just then, Morse came stumbling into the filming area, through a flap at the back of the tent.

God only knew where he had been. From the dazed look on his face, it was possible that he had finally polished off that rum and had been hunting around for a bit of limoncello, back in storage somewhere.

Morse sat down in one of the chairs, and Fancy took up a place beside him, holding onto the edge of his seat, awaiting the verdict, his own photo on the long table before him looking back at him; it was as if he were looking at a vision of his own memorial.

There was no use denying it.

His timer had run out, ringing with a tremendous clang along with the pounding of his heart.

The hosts, Joan and Jakes, came to the front of the tent, then, where Joan announced that, once again, to no one’s surprise, Max DeBryn was the day’s star baker.

And then Jakes, with a hint of a sardonic smile and a glimmer of contrition at being the bearer of bad news that did not quite ring true in his eyes, stepped up to the front and announced, “And … unfortunately, it’s time to say goodbye to one of our bakers…. and that person is….”

There was a pregnant pause that went on and on, while all the while Fancy’s heart was drumming in his ears.

And why, _why,_ did they always do that, draw it all out, so that he felt as if he were drowning in his own meringue, scarcely able to breathe? 

Couldn’t they just say…

“Alan.”

Alan Jago leapt up from his chair, as if to challenge the verdict.

 _“What?_ It should have been Box. He’s not got the sand for a man’s job.”

“Box is fifty-fifty,” Bixby replied, evenly.

“Hey!” Ronnie protested. 

Jago balled his hands into fists, the blood running into his ruddy face, but Trewlove looked undeterred.

“Not quite sure what you were going for, with all that clove and ginger, trying to add an extra bit of kick,” she said. “And the _extra salt_ was a definite cheap shot, all around.” 

“Oh, was that your objection?” Bixby asked, dreamily, with eyes, clearly, only for Morse. “I’m a bit partial to ginger myself.”

“I wasn’t talking about…” Trewlove began. “Oh, never mind.”

Max DeBryn raised his hand, in a gesture of polite formality.

“Will it be required for us to huddle around Alan and give him a customary tearful and fond farewell?” he asked.

“Well,” Bixby said, who clearly did not quite approve of parting with tradition. “Not if your heart’s not in it.”

“Then, adieu, Iago,” Max said. “When devils will the blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows.” 

Morse snorted, appreciatively.

What the hell were they on about now?

Maybe that was what made the pair of them so bloody awkward. 

They couldn’t even seem to get anyone’s _name_ right. 

“It’s Jago, not Iago,” Fancy protested.

“Eh, buggar this,” Jago blurted. He spun around on his heel and tore out of the tent, nearly bowling over a hapless cameraman in the process.

Fancy blinked, surprised to see the man take off as if the half of the Oxford City Police were after him.

Or, at least, Traffic.

But then, he caught Shirley’s eye, and, to his flustered surprise, she gave him a tentative smile. 

She _did_ know then, about Jago and his scheming little plot.

And, in the stand-off that followed, she had chosen to take his side.

He had lived to see another day.

And, as long as Morse was around, too, he might even make it through the next go ‘round.... 

It didn’t make for good viewing, did it? Wasn’t all that alluring, flipping on the telly, only to see someone sitting there, looking as if he would like nothing so much than to burn the whole place to the ground? 

“And _cut!”_

At the words, the whole lot of them seemed to relax, their shoulders to slump with relief. At the front of the tent, Bixby turned away, casually, as if to confer with Shirley, and, when he did…

It didn’t make sense.

Bixby was always, if nothing else, utterly impeccable.

What the hell was all over the seat of the man’s black trousers?

Was that … flour?

In the shape of _handprints?_

It looked as if someone had been grabbing hold of the man’s _arse_ during the break. 

Fancy turned at once to Morse. His face revealed nothing, was as impassive as ever, but it didn’t take a great detective to see the prints on Bixby’s trousers looked to be about the size of Morse’s hands.

Well, that was just the icing on the cake.

He hadn’t a chance, if Morse was slipping about during the filming breaks, whispering sweet nothings in Joss Bixby’s ear…

Suddenly, there was a scent of vanilla in the air. Not the artificial, sharp sort, but the real thing, as delicate as a whisper.

“Next round, don’t waste time,” a voice said.

He looked up to see that Shirley Trewlove was there, her face so close so as to almost be brushing his.

“It’s all we got,” she said.

And then she moved on, leaving Fancy sitting in his chair, utterly dumbfounded.

After a while, Morse, still sitting beside him, quirked a hint of a smile and leaned in, murmuring in his other ear.

“Say not the struggle nought avalieth,” he said.

Fancy frowned, trying to puzzle that out.

What? Was Morse saying he hadn’t a chance with her?

That his efforts would come to nothing?

But then… he had prefaced that with, “ _say not.”_

So, actually, he was saying that he _shouldn’t_ say that his efforts would come to nothing.

So…

Was he saying that he thought he might actually have a chance with her, after all?

Fancy looked to him, as if to confirm his wild hope, but it had taken him too long to figure it out; Morse was already halfway across the tent, heading not towards the back, with the other bakers, but out towards the front, with the crew.

“Where are you going?” Fancy asked. “Filming’s over for the day.”

Morse shrugged.

“Cakes and puddings are fine to fill the empty spaces,” he said, “but they won’t hold you at four in the morning, when the wolves come circling.”

And then he turned, to where Bixby was waiting just outside the transparent flap of the tent, out in the world beyond, the real world of rain-drenched green.

The man was inscrutable.

What was he talking about now?

Were there _wolves_ circling this tent, on top of everything else?

What the hell sort of reality show had he signed on for, anyway?


End file.
